Flora completed this novel while she was living in Liphook in the 1920s. The full typescript exists in her archives, but it was never published in that form. Instead, Flora herself published it in a revised form as monthly episodes in her own 'The Peverel Monthly' magazine. Below we show two of those episodes taken from the only two copies of 'The Peverel Monthly' known still to exist.
In the story, a sixteen year-old girl called Berengaria (or Berry for short) runs away from home a year after her father's death, in order to give her mother and brother Edmund the freedom to take up an offer by a cousin to move in with his family.
Posting a note to her mother, she hitches a ride on a canal boat and begins a new life
See Chapter II Chapter VI Seeking copies of 'Peverel Monthly' Synopsis of complete story Notes
Edited by FLORA THOMPSON.
Vol I. JUNE, 1928. No. 6.
GATES OF EDEN by FLORA THOMPSON
Author of "Bog-Myrtle and Peat," "The Peverel Papers," etc.
CHAPTER II.
Mrs. Verlander sat at the tea-table and cut bread and jam into fingers for little Edmund. The sunset light, falling in one long ray between the window-frame and the drawn blind, showed her face, usually so dark and glowing, the colour of putty; there was swollen red about her eyes, and her lips were pressed into a thin line.
“Just one more peck, my duck!” she urged as she held the finger of food to the child's mouth. He bit at it obediently, but at every mouthful she had to coax him again, and, gradually, her strained features relaxed into tenderness.
The sunset ray fell upon the dark head of the mother and flushed the fair, delicate face of the child. Berengaria, entering noiselessly, thought of the scripture pictures in the lesson books at school. Neither of them noticed her, and she stood for a few moments watching them from the porch while she tried to still her quick breathing and trembling limbs.
To her, fresh from her encounter with the outer world, that poor cottage room seemed a very heaven upon earth. All the old, homely things seemed suddenly precious—the brass candlesticks, one on each side of the chimney mirror ; the picture of the girl in the torn red cloak; the bright chintz cushions tied with tapes to the seats of the wooden chairs ; even the fat pink roses upon the tea-cups had a new significance, although she knew the bursting petals of each flower by heart. This was home : here was safety, quiet, rest, love—or, at any rate, all there was of love for her in the world. She plunged into the dimness as one tired and heated into a softly lapping pool: then the long red ray from the window seemed to point to the staircase door, and she remembered.
She took her place at the tea-table heavily. She had not thought that tea could be made and meals be taken in a world so altered, but here was her mother reproaching her with not having prepared it before she went out.
“I should've thought 'twas the least you e'd a done to've got a ' cup o' tea for anybody, and Eddie, poor kid, without so much as a bite or sup since breakfast. Didn't like to before th' neighbours went? What business was it of theirs whether we'd any tea or not? Besides, you ought to've been back and got it. How long do you think it'd a taken me to go across to surgery? Not ten minutes, and here you've been gone over an hour. Moonin' about the lanes again, that's what you've been doin' – you as ought to be a comfort an' help to anybody!"
To avert further enquiries, Berry mumbled something about falling down and breaking the medicine bottle. It was a lie, of course, but Berry, from long experience, had learnt the convenience of lying. Making excuses, she called it to herself when her conscience pricked her.
Her mother gave a little sharp cluck of vexation. "Just what I might've expected from you, and to-day of all days," she commented. "Fancy a great girl of your age fallin' down in the road like a blessed baby, not able to go a simple errand as young Edmund c'd've done easy. What's goin' to become ,of you, I don't know!”
Berry did not know either, but she did know that to attempt to explain would only make matters worse. When the girls attacked her, as they often did, though never before with the present severity, her mother had a way of punishing Berry herself for it. If they mocked her and called her names, it stood to reason she must have done something herself to provoke them.
They didn't set upon each other, and they wouldn't set upon her if she always took care to be pleasant and sociable. As to herself, she knew better than to interfere in children's quarrels, she'd have more than enough to do if she began that game. Yet when some small boys upon the Green had knocked Edmund down and put dust in his hair, she had rushed out upon them like a whirlwind, threatened to tell the policeman, and carried the screaming Edmund indoors and petted him.
Berry could not help thinking of this as she stayed off the moment when she would be expected to eat by stirring her tea, sipping it, then stirring it again, until her mother complained that the sound "fidgetted" her.
Upon the opposite wall her father's stone lion ramped upon a bracket of worm-eaten oak, the spoil of some old church or other. In spite of its angularity, the creature had a lifelike look, too lifelike for the work of a hand so irretrievably still. Beneath it was a little table with pipes, a tobacco jar, and a few thumbed text-books upon stonework. The elbow chair in which he had sat was close at hand. That was his corner, the rest of the room was her mother's.
Though Mrs. Verlander ate nothing herself, Berry's abstinence was an offence. "You'll go makin' yourself ill at this rate,” she protested, "and then who'll have the trouble and expense of you?”
Berry's face flamed and her eyes swam. “I am so sorry, Mummie," she gulped, "but I couldn't eat anything, really – not now"; and the eyes of both turned involuntarily to the staircase door.
The mother's face softened. She cut a slice of bread and butter, delicately thin, and slid it from the knife on to Berry's plate. "You two's all I've got now”, she began, then turned her head aside.
Berry longed to comfort her, but no words would come. All day she had rehearsed this scene, planning how she would fling her arms round her mother and tell her how much she loved her, and would try to help her; but the reserve of even a short lifetime cannot be broken so easily. Her mother had always treated her as a child, a child to be cared for and commanded to be scolded, or even encouraged at times, but never to be treated as a reasonable human being. Reasoning, indeed, upon Berry's part had always been checked as ‘sauce’; while any suggestion she had ever dared to offer had been swept aside as childish or silly. So now, though her whole being seemed to overflow with love and longing, she sat mute and apparently as idealess as a babe.
After Edmund's fair, delicate little head had drooped down into his plate and he had been hauled off by his mother to bed, there were letters to be written. Distant cousins of Mrs. Verlander were informed of the exact hour and moment of her husband's death and bidden to his funeral. None of them had ever, seen him, and it was just as well that they had not, for his assumption of superiority would have made him no friends among the hard-working shopkeepers and small dairy farmers who were Mrs. Verlander's kin. Nearer relatives than cousins she had none living, and her husband's family had disowned him long before she had come into his life.
As the last letter was sealed and propped up on the mantelpiece for posting next morning, there came a knock at the door, and Berry, running to open it, found Skipper upon the step.
To cover her surprise and confusion, she seized his hand, and would have led him to a chair; her mother, meanwhile, regarding him questioningly.
In spite of his civil "Good-evenin', Ma'am. I 'opes I'm not intrudin' at such a time?" Mrs. Verlander could not help showing by her expression that his visit did strike her rather as an intrusion. This was scarcely to be wondered at, for not only had she never spoken to him before, but, in common with the other cottagers, regarded him as little above the social level of the travelling tinkers and bootlace vendors who turned aside from the main road sometimes to try their luck in Bemmington.
He waved aside the cushioned chair that Berry would have pressed him into, and balanced himself upon the extreme edge of a plain wooden one behind the doors.
"I thought p'raps you med be wantin' this," he said, as he placed a new bottle of medicine upon the table. "I met Nurse just outside th' doctor's place, and she ran in again and got it for me. Very light upon her pins that young 'ooman is, 't'ould do a sick man good just to look at her."
He was rewarded by a cold "Thank you" from Mrs. Verlander, and a softly breathed, “How kind of you” from Berry.
"'Twas a great shame,” he began, then paused at the sight of Berry's agonised expression. He had not, of course, the slightest suspicion that she had kept silence about treatment which would have sent most girls of her age crying to their mothers, but her flaming cheeks and trembling hands warned him that for some reason or another she wished him to be silent about it.
Mrs. Verlander did not notice the pause. Before he could give his sentence another turn she broke in with, “It's very good of you, I'm sure, Mr. –?"
“Morgan's my name, Ma'am, though there's no need to mention it, being called Skipper by everybody about these parts."
“It's very good of you, Mr. Morgan," she persisted rather loftily, for she could not altogether overlook the fact that he was only one social stage removed from a tramp. "However Berry managed to fall down and break that other bottle, I don't know. It was very careless of her and a great shame, as you said just now; but as you may have heard, we've been rather hard put to it just lately, and maybe it's made her a bit nervy like.”
His old blue eyes flashed a twinkle of comprehension towards Berry. "It was a great shame, I meant to say, that she should've been so upset. But, never mind, my maid, troubles always flock together; come one big one, 'tis bound to be followed by a tribe o' little an' big. You'll 've years an' years without any at all to make up for this, you take my words for't. But I'm hinderin' and p'raps both'rin' you, Ma'am?”
Mrs. Verlander smiled faintly; she had had so many callers that day that one more or less did not seem to matter much. This one, indeed, being wholly unconnected with her former life, brought a little distraction and relief to her overwrought mind; there was something wholesome and bracing about his queer, old-fashioned manner and brisk, straight-forward speech. She stepped over to the door and closed it. "You're kindly welcome to stay for a while," she said, and sat down before the spread out writing materials.
“Well, then, now as I am here, is ther' anything I can do or get for you in Belminster to-morrow? I've got to put a bag o' herbs on th' eight o'clock train, and if ther's any errand or bit o' shoppin' I can do for you or th' young lady there I sh'll feel it an honour."
Mrs. Verlander made a show of considering. There were plenty of things in Belminster she wanted, with all the mourning to be ready by Friday, but as she had no money until her husband's insurance was paid, she would have to wait.
No," she said slowly, "I really don't think there's anything you can get, kind as it is of you to offer. The fact is, I shall be going myself tomorrow or next day, and all I want can wait till then.”
The Skipper dangled his hands thoughtfully – such hard, knotted old brown hands. Berry gazed fascinated at tile wide blue rings tattooed round the fingers and wondered who the ‘E. K.’ was whose effigy, with snaky curls, was printed upon one wrist. Perhaps it was the portrait of some girl he had loved when young, and in that case he had had it done before his arm became so hard and shrivelled. She tried to picture the portrait upon a young, smooth wrist, but failed. This was the only tattooing she had ever seen, and it was inseparable from parchment skin and fingers like claws. Skipper was speaking to her mother again, and his voice sounded kind and serious, quite different from the voices of the village men, who were always “getting at" or "telling off" somebody.
“Well, anythin' you med happen to want at any time, I'm th' man for't. Every town and village in these parts I visit in turn, one for one yerb and another for another. This month it's yarrow I'm after, an' tho' that may be found anywheres all up an' down th' land, it's nowhere so fine in flower as within th' sound o' Belminster chimes. Another time it'll be centuary or wood-sage or wild-rue, so I ranges all over, from th' Forest to Salisbury Plain; or another time I'll be off to the Island for the valerian that grows upon th' cliffs."
Mrs. Verlander mused again. If she owned she had no commission for so widely-travelled a man, she would look like a woman of no affairs, as well as of no wealth. "I wonder now," she said on a sudden impulse, "if ever on your travels you have come across another family of our name?”
It was Skipper's turn to consider. “Not very often," he said. "’T'is not what you might call a common name – not one as Tom, Dick or Harry generally sail under. Come to think o't, I've only run across it once, an' that time 'twer' tacked on to th' dead instead o' th' livin'"
“Oh, do tell us!" cried Berry. The subject of family, introduced by her mother to make conversation, was of real interest to her, with the inscription in the old book fresh in her mind.
The Skipper smiled. "So you'd like to call cousins wi' other boys an' gels, an' different sort o' ones I reckon from that riff raff on th' Green to-day. Myself, I don't care that for family," and he snapped his fingers derisively. "One man's as good as another if he is as good, and if he isn't, a grand name only makes him seem worse nor what he is. Not but what I might boast a bit on my own, if I felt like it – rollin' in money some of my family are. My own brother wer' one of the head ones in Pompey dockyard, worked his way up to it – evenin' classes an' all that sort o' thing; then invented some gadget or other an' made his fortune. Had a nuss for his kids, if you please! an' wer' sittin' in his easy chair and sippin' his port wine like a lord before he wer' fifty. No, I 'av't set eyes on him for a lifetime a'most, not that there wer' any ill will between us, our roads led in opposite directions, that's all. But as to these Verlanders now, th' dead ones, so to speak, I came across 'em in a church down New Forest way while shelterin' from a thunderstorm. Rows and rows of 'em, I'll take my oath; stones with great big vases stuck a-top and little boys, as naked as they was born, all cut in stone to the life. All Sir Thomases or Sir Edmunds, or Sir Thomases' or Sir Edmunds' sons, lyin' with their ladies, row on row, th' church wer' so full up it fairly stunk with 'em.”
“My father's name was Edmund, too," put in Berry, eagerly.
“And he had a brother called Tom," her mother added; he talked about nothing else just at the last; 'twas Tommy this and Tommy that, and all about guns and fishing rods and the like.”
“Perhaps they wer' his relations buried in that church," suggested Berengaria.
“Very like, very like," acquiesced the old man," such things've been known. Many an old family that used to sit down to table w' kings and queens has come down to milkin' its own cows, or even to buyin' its milk by the pen'orth, and even that, so far as I can see, is better than lyin' in tombs, however grand.”
“But they might not all be dead," urged Berry," and even if they are, they might have left father some money or lands. There might be somethin' in Chancery even, like old Jim Blake's fortune as he's always going to get, but doesn't."
“How you do run on, child,” her mother broke in sharply. “Not likely we sh'd have kin as wer' titled folks; your poor father'd sure to have mentioned 'em if we had; and even if such people did belong to us, they'd have their own children to leave their money to, or if not they'd leave it to hospitals and such like. Money never goes begging, you may depend upon that!”
“But if Skipper could tell us the place we might perhaps make sure. Besides, it'd be nice to see the graves and look at the place where they used to live, even if there aren't any left alive."
“Ah! Now you've got me beat," declared Skipper." All I can say is that it wer' either near or just inside the New Forest, over the border, so to speak. I wer' trudging up out o' Wiltshire to the marshes round about Hengistbury Head for th' sea-lavender. 'T been sort of sultry-like all day, and just as I sighted th' Forest before me, it got dark as night a'most. Still, bein' in a hurry, I pushed on for an hour or so, till, all at once, ther' was such a bust up as I dunno as I've ever seen or heard in this country before nor since. Any port in a storm, says I, and made for th' church porch; then, finding th' door unlocked, went inside.
“Stood all alone in a little green lane, that church did. I daresay ther' wer' houses about somewhere, but I never saw none, only a pair o' big iron gates and an avenue leadin' to some great house or other. What th' name o' th' parish wer' I never knew even, for th' rain, continuing to pepper down long after th' storm was over, I had to turn out in it at last, and all the rest o' th' day I trailed through th' Forest, as wet as a drownded rat outside and dry as a kex within. Late in th' afternoon I struck a station and took train for Christchurch. So, come to think o't now, I never set eyes on a livin' soul in th' place, not that there wer'n't plenty not far off, I daresay, but whether th' dead 'uns wer' all of the Verlanders in that parish, or whether there were plenty more alive and kicking above ground, I couldn't say, but if I ever med happen to hit upon that' place again I'll take care to find out for you."
After Skipper had departed, Mrs. Verlander brought out an old black frock of her own and began turning and altering it for Berry. Under the stimulus of a difficult job her spirits revived, and they talked in snatches of the Verlander tombs and tried to connect them with the dead man's vague hints of his family's importance. "Not that it matters either way," the mother reiterated. "Sirs and their ladies don't want such as us flung in their faces."
“But we can't help being poor," protested Berry, "there's nothing else the matter with us, is there Mother? We look just the same as anybody else, and could do the same things as they do if we'd only been taught, and how can we know if they're proud until we find them? Perhaps they'd like to know us just as much as we should them.”
“Don't you believe it,” snapped her mother," nobody wants to hear of kin who isn't either goin' to be a help or a credit to 'em. Poor relations are looked upon as a curse. As you know, your poor father always said that his own father had a thousand pounds from his kin to take himself off and never let them set eyes on him again. That don't sound as if they wanted a workin' woman and her two brats sprung upon 'em. Nor they won't have, neither. I've got my pride if I haven't got much else, and two hands, thank God, to earn a living with.
(To be continued.)
Edited by FLORA THOMPSON.
Vol I. OCTOBER, 1928. No. 10.
GATES OF EDEN by FLORA THOMPSON
Author of "Bog-Myrtle and Peat," "The Peverel Papers," etc.
CHAPTER VI.
It was late. Between the dark spires of the poplar-tops one star burned orange in the misty sunset: from open cottage doors came the clatter of supper-plates and the rise and fall of voices, but, without, the only sounds were the cool swishing of some late gardener about his watering operations and the more distant creaking of a night-jar, far away in the dewy freshness of the fast-darkening fields.
Berrv, tightening her hair-slide, was surprised to find the night-dew already damp upon her head. It had been a sultry, tiring day, and a sad one to her, for it was the first anniversary of her father's death. She stooped and tried to hoist her faggot to her shoulder again, but this time it was harder than ever to lift, and after a vain struggle, she decided to go home and get her mother to come to her assistance.
That was a thing she hated doing, especially after she had struggled so far with it, for her mother disliked nothing more than Berry being home late and would already be cross with her. Then the wood she had gathered was not of good quality, heavy, wet, decayed stuff that would not light well, and she did not want to draw her mother's attention to it. She should have known better than to go the Rookery Copse: it was lovely there of course, dense and cool and green, and so very far away from everybody, but the wood, as her mother had told her last time, was but damp tinder, good for nothing, all sodden and falling to pieces at a touch. The damp weight of it was the cause of her lateness to-night; she had had to rest time after time where no rest was due and, plodding on in the moist heat of the evening, had become limp and exhausted.
She dragged her bundle of sticks to the shadow of a garden wall; crossed the village green and opened the cottage gate noislessly; then, hearing a strange voice within, she paused in the porch to decide if it was convenient for her to enter.
A man was speaking at some length in a straight-forward, business-like tone — not a gentleman's voice, but not a villager's either, something between the two that was seldom heard in Bennington, the kind of voice Berry had sometimes noticed in the Belminster shops.
“Well, there it is, Nell," he was saying. "You must take it or leave it as you think best. If you decide to come, there's a good home for you and the boy. You'll be missis there, just as my poor Ethel was when she was alive. I never interfere with anything in the house as long as everything's O.K., and I ar'nt a particular man neither. If you come, I give you your two pounds ten a week, just as I did poor Ethel, and you keeps things going indoors, while I pays the rent and coal and buys the children’s boots, just as I've always done."
“It's a rare chance," said her mother reflectively " but—"
“Oh, the girl again!" broke in the stranger's voice. "Well, as I said before, I'd have her too if I could, for I've got enough for all, and am about sick of housekeepers and their ways. But it can't be done. It’s a tight squeeze as it is, my two girls to share the best room with you — not but what it’s a good-sized room with two beds in it, but it will only hold you three with any comfort, and I can't bear anybody to pig it in my house. Now the little chap I can do with fine. I can take our little Robby into my bed, it'll be company for me, and then yours can slip in with our young Jimmy and all as cosy as birds in a nest. But you say your Berry's sixteen, so why worry about her? Get her a place in service. Time she did turn out and do for herself, they get lazy if they're not put to it young. Then, when she might be coming home for a week's holiday or so, you could make up a bed in the front room for her. I shouldn't mind that, just pro tem as they say, but being a busy sort of chap, secretary to my branch of the Union and a club or two, and that the only place I've got to write or see anybody in, I couldn't do with it regular."
He paused, but there was no reply but a faint sigh.
“I would if I could, straight!" he went on, "for I know what a one you are in a house, same as all the women of our family are, and my place is just going to rack and ruin with one housekeeper after another. And as to marrying again! Well! I'm but six and thirty I know, born, but not dead yet, as they say, and you never know what you may do, but I've never seen the one yet as I should care to put in my poor Et's place."
"Yes, I know, I know!" sighed Mrs. Verlander sympathetically, "It's only a year since my poor chap went. A year this very day."
“Yes, I've been thinking about that, and wanting to help you as well as myself. Being first cousins too, and brought up together as it were, I've been thinking it would make things sort of seemly like. If you only knew what I've had to put up with from those housekeepers — one of 'em actually threatened me with breach, though, God knows, the only thing I ever wanted to break was her ugly old mug! So, thinks I, having my holiday from the Goods Yard this week, I'd just slip up here on the old motor-bike and bring you and the boy back in the side-car.”
After he had finished speaking there was a long silence, broken only by the creaking of a wicker chair, and the heavy footsteps of someone fidgetting about the room. Berry cast off her sacking apron and picked the fragments of leaves and twigs from her hair. She was about to enter when her mother spoke.
"Well, Cousin Oliver, it’s very good of you I am sure, and if it wer'nt for Berry, such an offer'd wipe out all my troubles at one sweep. But, as things are, I don't quite know what to say. I must stop here at least until I can find her a place, and there's difficulties in the way of that even."
She paused again and Berry knew she was pondering upon the impossibility of getting together even the humblest outfit.
“Well, Oliver," she concluded," I'll think it over, and you may be sure I'll come if I anyways can, but a child's a child; you've got your own, so you do know that, and I must put my own flesh and blood first, not but what yours are that to me too, brought up as we were together, though not havin' seen or heard of each other for years, but you know what I mean. P'raps something'll turn up. I hope so, for if I could once get back to the old place where we wer' always respected it'd be like a new lease of life to me, after beggin' and prayin' for work to them no better, or not so good as myself, and me a farmer's daughter, if but in a small way—"
“Right ho!" agreed Cousin Oliver cheerily. "We'll leave it at that, then. And now for a bit of supper before I go to roost at that one-eyed shack you call a pub here. I must just run round there first though, I've got a few oddments for you in my bag. One of old Worldeham’s pork-pies. You remember him? Going strong as ever — plate-glass windows and motor-vans instead of the little old shop and barrow though! There's a few tomatoes of my own growing too. Oh, yes, I'm a dab hand at gardening, got a nice bit of glass now and a vine. Roses too, you should see the bunch I put on poor Et's grave every week! And doing well at the Station, might have been a stationmaster years ago if I'd liked, but no! Catch me going to some little roadside shack and working all hours of the day and night just for the sake of hearing myself called boss! Not but what I am boss now, for the Yard's right away from the rest and I'm head over it. Besides I've bought my house and don't fancy leaving it. You'll like the house, Nell, its small, but I've got everything tip-top, every floor covered, and gas, water and everything. You'll. forget that you ever were Verlander and fancy yourself a Fletcher again once you get there and meet the ones that were kids with us."
He was still speaking when he brushed past Berry without noticing her, a tall, large man, whose every movement was full of the energy she knew so well in her own mother.
Mrs. Verlander was already busy preparing the supper-table when Berry slipped past and upstairs to tidy herself. As she was fastening her only decent frock, Eddie called to her from his bed in the next room.
“I'm going to live with my cousins at Davenham," he announced. There's one called Jim as has got a bicycle, and perhaps he'll teach me to ride on it, his father said so."
“Go to sleep!" said Berengaria kindly." You can tell me all about that in the morning." Her goodnight kiss pleaded passionately for a response, but got none.
At the foot of the stairs her mother whispered hurried explanations, but of the real object of her cousin's visit she said nothing, nor was Berry's lateness mentioned. The faggot of course was forgotten, and when Berry went for it at daybreak the next morning it had disappeared, but she often thought about it after and marvelled that a little more or less moisture in a few fallen sticks should be able to affect human affairs to the extent their weight and her consequent lateness and eavesdropping did hers.
Very soon Oliver returned with the parcel of food, and supper was eaten and a portion taken up to the still wakeful Eddie. Then Berry went to bed, leaving the cousins talking of old times and friends.
The next morning, before Oliver returned from the one-eyed shack, as he called the inn, Berengaria was off to Belminster with a parcel of sewing for Mrs. Garrard. It was a glorious August morning, dewy and fresh, and golden with sun and the yellow later summer flowers, but her heart was heavy as a stone.
All through their worst troubles until now she had felt herself a help to her mother and a prop to the poor home they had clung to so passionately; but now, in the light of last night's overheard conversation, she saw herself as only an extra burden, a hindrance. But for her, her mother's difficulties would be at an end, she would be raised once more to respectability among her own kin, with a sure shelter, an honourable place in life and freedom from care.
She wondered why she had ever been born, nobody needed her, or cared for her at all, she did not even like the same things as other people did, no one she knew cared for books or trees or flowers, or even the same kind of clothes, excepting Miriam, and even she had her music and did not care so much. The thought of Miriam, however, brought a little comfort, she could at least tell Miriam all about it and ask her advice.
Berry leaned over the canal-bridge which marked her usual half-way resting-place on the Belniinster road, and gazed into the water as though she hoped to read some solution of her difficulties there. How dark and deep and cool it looked! The water was not pure she knew, upon dull, heavy days there was a perceptable film of coal-dust on its surface, left by the passing barges, but today, the shimmering reflections of blue sky and light August clouds concealed all imperfections.
She leaned still farther over the low parapet and stretched her hands towards a brilliantly tinted butterfly which was floating dreamily upon the air-currents. Sometimes it rose a few feet into the air, then dipped to the surface, dangerously low, as though the water held the same fascination for it as it did for Berry herself.
“You stupid beauty! You'll be drowned!" she cried, and in her involuntary movement towards it almost over-balanced. She regained her position nimbly enough, but after the slight shock had subsided, she wondered. If she had quite over-balanced and no barge had passed beneath, and no one had come along the road in time to rescue her? What a neat and easy settlement of all their difficulties. And some people had the courage to end things in that way. Could she? Oh, no! She shrank back shuddering to the warmth of the sun and the glory of the golden, gossamer-threaded earth.
After that she sat on the sun-warmed stones of the parapet for a long time thinking and watching the black, tarpaulin-shrouded barges passing at long intervals beneath.
There were women in some of them and little children, all crowded together and grimed with coal-dust, but laughing and talking and very often eating. In the stern of one a young mother suckled her baby, dividing her attentions between that and her duties as steerswoman. “’Ere, Bill, draw it mild!" she shouted to the man on the bank as his stick went Wallop! upon the dusty hide of his old grey horse to the accompaniment of a more than ordinarily sulphrous burst of language.
"All right! All right, ol' gel; but this is a bloomin' coal-barge not a slap-up yacht y'know!" and his speech, so kindly in tone, was still interlarded with oaths.
The boat, the horse and man, the woman and baby disappeared round the next bend. She had never seen them before, she would never see them again, yet they would he living their lives, far away and different, just as she would be living her own.
"Where do the barges go to?" she asked a youth, who, deceived by her intent downward gaze into the hope of sensation of some kind, had joined her upon the bridge.
"'Go? Why, anywheres where the water goes. To Avonbridge , Hamptontown, or right on down to the sea — at least them as takes the stone does. But you take my tip Miss, don't you have anything to say to them bargees, not that they takes much notice of gels, public 'ouses is more in their line, but they swears something awful, 'twould make your hair stand bolt upright upon your head to hear some of 'em. I don't have any truck with 'em myself, but my young brother he goes off with a party of 'em a year or two ago. Errand boy at a chemist's he were at the time, got a good, cushy job if 'e'd only known when he were well-off; but 'ed always got's head in a book, and we all knows what that sort of thing leads to. Well, he goes out with's errands one morning as usual and comes to this very bridge. "Give us a lift as far as Avonmouth!" he calls to the first likely-lookin, party as goes under, and with that, off he goes, leaving the bike and med’cin to the next passer-by, and the next we heard of him was a letter with a foreign stamp to say 'e'd got a job on a sailing ship and was on his way to New Zealand, and we've never set eyes on him since, nor don't s'pose we ever shall do. That's what comes of reading, puts a lot of silly trash in a fellers head!" and Berengaria left him muttering “Silly fool him! Knows what work is now, I don't think!”
Berengaria delivered her parcel of work. There was no money to come, for it had been advanced when the work was given; and as Mrs. Garrard had had to rummage the house for that, no more sewing could be expected at present.
Yet Berry lingered. “Do you think I might speak to Miriam a moment?" she said to the servant, who for once was minding the shop.
“No, you can't!" snapped the other. "She's gone away for good, or for some long time at any rate. Mrs. Garrard's to London this morning to see her and her Auntie Leopold off to Germany."
“But I didn't know she was going."
“I don't 'spose you did. She didn't know herself until Saturday, when her auntie came. It’s a fine chance for her, they say, she's going to some school to have her voice trained and learn acting and dancing and all the rest of it, and just teach her little cousins their A.B.C. at home in return. A fine place they say the Leopolds have got, warehouses as would reach all down from here to the Butter Market. You should see Mrs. Leopold's fur coat and her rings! And herself, the perfect lady. A lovely lace frock she wore on Sunday, just put it on to show them how she looked when she went to some do in it, Royalty and all there, she showed us the very curtsey she made to them in it —. But what's the matter? You'll miss Miriam? I daresay you will, she always showed her best side to you. But don't look so down in the mouth about it. I expect she'll write to you some time or other."
Rachel went on with her dusting, and Berry edged towards the door and back again.
“Have you got such a thing as an envelope you could spare, Rachel?” she asked shyly.
Rachel snatched up an odd envelope that lay upon the cash-register. "This don't look to be of much account," she said and tossed it over.
But Berry had not finished yet. "Rachel," she said coaxingly, “do you think you could possibly lend me three-halfpence? I've got to post a letter for mother, and forgot the money for the stamp."
Rachel stepped outside for a moment and came back with the money. "You needn't trouble about paying it back," she said magnanimously. “Go on! Of course you needn't, the very idea!”
At the first seat upon the roadside embankment outside the town, Berengaria brought out a stump of pencil, tore the fly-leaf out of a little book she carried in her pocket, and wrote—
Dear Mother,
Miriam having gone to Germany with her auntie, Mrs. Garrard wants me to stay and help her with the little ones for a bit. Maybe I shall stop altogether, that is if I can suit her, and I'm sure I can, knowing their ways. So you and Eddie go with Cousin Oliver. I daresay he’ll take you back in his sidecar, it'll just hold the two of you and I shall be all right. Mrs. Garrard says don't you trouble to send any clothes as I can have Miriam's old ones, but send me your new address to write to when you get settled down, and don't you worry about me, I shall be all right, certain.
From your loving daughter, Berry.
Slipping her letter into the envelope she retraced her steps towards the town, bought a stamp, and posted her letter in time, as she knew, to reach Bennington about mid-day.
(To be Continued.)
WANTED
Further copies of 'The Peverel Monthly'
While she lived in Liphook, Flora started the Peverel
Society a postal writers circle and issued 'The Peverel Monthly'
to members. We are trying to collect as many examples of
this small magazine as possible. Unfortunately, because it was a publication
within a private society, no examples were lodged with the British Library.
If anyone has an example in their keeping, or knows of any which still exist,
contact us. We would be happy to accept photocopies
of the original, or take copies ourselves.
It is interesting to note Flora's changing style of writing during her period in Liphook (the 1920s). In an uncompleted novel called The Stithy, which starts on a similar theme to Gates of Eden, but we assume pre-dates it, she writes in the First Person:
When my father died, my little brother went about saying
"My Daddy's dead! My Daddy's dead!" Then the neighbours petted him
and gave him sweets. Poor child! He knew no better, for he was only [ten] seven.
I was fifteen, and a girl. For me there were neither sweets nor sympathy, nor
did I desire them, [so far had my childhood already receded from me.] I only
wanted to be left alone to face that new, silent, icy presence in the house
as best I could.
My father had not been very good to us. He had been a drunkard with all the
faults of his kind; weak-willed, unstable, mean and prodigal by turns; a poor
broken-down creature, puffed up to the last by a fancied superiority to the
labouring people amongst whom we lived. A fancy based upon a tradition of blue
blood in his veins and a striking presence.
A striking presence he certainly had, in spite of slack, emaciated
Compare this with the start of Gates of Eden, which is in the Third Person and similar in style to that she eventually uses so successfully over 10 years later in Lark Rise:
Berengaria pushed aside the geranium pots and leaned her
burning forehead against the windowpane. The screen of elder leaves outside
cast a flickering shade, very cool and comforting. Upon her flushed cheeks and
tired eyes. Beyond the shade cast by the tree the garden lay drenched in strong
yellow sunlight light so fiercely scorching that the grass-patch around
the apple tree had crisped to a sandy brown and even the crinkled-papery red
flowers of the hollyhocks turned inward at the edges.
All the week it had been "Berry, come here!", "Go there!",
"Do this," or "Fetch that"; but after that terrible hour
at noon today the strain had slackened, and she had shut herself in this little
place, half wash-house, half larder, and fastened the door against possible
intruders by thrusting a table-knife through the hasps of the broken latch
Unlike Lark Rise, which was written in the 1930s about times in the 1880s, Gates of Eden was written in the 1920s about the 1920s. Thus, although horse-drawn transport was still used (in particular on the canal, and drawing Mrs White's caravan), motorised transport was common. Stan is a motor mechanic by trade. Despite this, there is also a distinct feeling of harking back to 'old times' in the person of Old Skipper, the herb collector, and in Berengaria's love and knowledge of country lore.
It is not clear whether or not Gates of Eden was ever offered to a publisher (other than Flora's own serialisation in The Peverel Monthly) but it has never been published in its complete form.
Unlike Lark Rise again, it has no pretence to be anything but fiction. And as fiction, it would probably not be a success by today's literary standards. Indeed, Flora breaks some of the 'cardinal rules' of creative fiction writing she has a tendency to 'tell' the reader too many things, rather than letting them 'show' eventually as the story progresses; and she changes 'viewpoint' a little too suddenly at times. These are faults which do not matter in Lark Rise, since there the intention is not to build up tension within a single story. However, they makes Gates of Eden look a little naive, at least to a modern reader.
Perhaps a more interesting aspect of the story, however, is in considering to what extent it may be seen as autobiographical.
There are certainly some parallels between Flora's own life and that of her main character Berengaria. Both had a stone mason as a father, and although Flora's father did not die so early as Berengaria's, he is certainly reputed to have had some of his traits. And there was also the Timms family legend of having fallen from greater things, as did the Verlanders. And Flora's favourite brother Edwin seems to appear again as 'Edmund', as in Lark Rise.
And one wonders if some of the hopes and fears perhaps even experiences which Berengaria has in Gates of Eden were also shared in real life by Flora. It could be that we see deeper into the soul of Flora through Berengaria than we do through 'Laura' in the Lark Rise trilogy and in Heatherley.
Written by John Owen Smith, 2002
The following is a synopsis of the story told in the complete typescript of 'Gates of Eden' by Flora Thompson
The story opens on the day Edmund Verlander is buried.
His daughter Berengaria (Berry for short) is sixteen, her brother Edmund is
seven.
We gather that her father had been a stone-mason, and that the villagers and
even his employers had found him both haughty and undependable.
While hiding away from all the fuss, Berry finds an old book propping open a
casement window. Browsing through it, she reads: "And presently they came
to the Gates of Eden and to one here and there it was permitted to peep through:
but few in good sooth were they who might enter there-at."
On the inner lid of the book is a small, stuck-in picture: a bird perched upon
a man's wrist and Latin words beneath, and, written in faded copper-plate, Edmund
Verlander, Christchurch College, Oxford. She wonders who that particular Edmund
Verlander was - all the male Verlanders seemed to be named Edmund.
The village nurse asks Berry to fetch some medicine from the Surgery for her
mother - but on the way home she is taunted by a couple of the village bully-girls,
and in a fit of temper she throws the bottle at them and smashes it.
This little drama is seen by 'Old Skipper', the local herb gatherer, a 'small
bent figure of a man, grey from head to foot with dust and age'.
On her return home, Berry tells her mother she broke the bottle
by accident.
Her mother despairs of her, and goes on to reminisce about the family. (This
was cut from the Peverel Monthly version)
Later in the morning, Skipper knocks at the door, asking if he
can do anything to help the family.
Mrs Verlander would prefer to do things herself, but then on a sudden impulse
asks him to let her know, "if ever in your travels you've happened to come
across another family of our name."
Skipper tells tales of his travels, including finding graves of Verlanders somewhere
near the New Forest, before leaving.
Mrs Verlander works out her expenses to see how the family will
cope.
Skipper takes to calling at their cottage when his round brought him in their
direction, to collect and pay for the herbs they had gathered and dried for
him. He would then stay for a meal, 'diving into one of his many packages to
bring forth a bag of cakes or a tin of fish or fruit as his contribution to
the meal; and one day, as well as the bag of buns, he produces a bundle of books
tied tightly in a row with string.'
"There you are, my maid! You like readin' I know: stuff your brains with
these and let worry go hang!" he says to Berry.
Mrs Verlander mother is taking in millinery work at home to make
ends meet.
The Vicar's wife arrives and offers to place Berry 'in service'
she is
offended when Berry refuses the offer.
One by one the best of their family possessions disappear. One
morning there was 'not even tea for breakfast, but only the coloured water made
by steeping their toast-crusts
'
Mrs Verlander sends Berry to the pawn shop in Belminster.
'That was the
first, but by no means the last time Berry visited the shop just over the bridge'.
Mrs Garrard who runs the shop appreciates Mrs Verlander's needle-work, and offers
to find her more work. She also has a daughter, Miriam, who becomes firm friends
with Berry. Miriam wants to train to become a singer and actress.
The Verlanders hear that Skipper has fallen ill, is at a roadside
cottage four or five miles away. Berry sets out to visit him. 'Surely that thin,
shrunken, yellow old man was not Skipper? But it was!'
As she arrives, Skipper is being taken away, but not before they exchange words
of comfort.
On Lady Day, for the first time in her life, Mrs Verlander was
not ready with her rent.
'"It's all up!" she cried, banging the pillar-box down on the table.
"It's all up! I must put my pride in my pocket and ask old Jarvis to give
me a job at the turnip-hoeing."'
Berry goes to ask Jarvis to give her mother a job, but he refuses: "You
tell your mother I'll not be bothered with her or any good-looking young woman
in my fields. Her sort are nothing but a hindrance."
'Spring glided into Summer and Berry grew taller and thinner, and her mother's
dark, crinkled hair began to show little frosted threads in the sunlight.'
Berry is coming home having been out gathering wood. At the door
to the house, she pauses in the porch hearing a strange voice within.
It is her mother's cousin Oliver, a widower, come to suggest that she and Edmund
move in with him - but there will be no room for Berry. Her mother is dubious,
because of this.
Having heard it all, Berry now sees herself only as an extra burden to the family.
On her way to Belminster, she leans over the canal bridge and gazes into the
water.
"Where do the barges go?" she asks a passing lad. He tells her they
go to "Avonbridge, Hamptown, or right on down to the sea" - and that
his young brother had gone off on one of them two year ago, and never come back.
When she gets to the shop, she finds that Miriam has left unexpectedly 'for
good' to go to her aunt in Germany for voice training. Berry decides on the
spur of the moment to run away from home, using the canal like the lad's brother
did.
She begs an envelope and postage stamp, and writes her mother a note to say
that she has been asked to stay on at the shop by Mrs Garrard.
Berry goes back to the canal bridge, and hitches a lift on the next barge, alighting at the end of the day at 'the lock nearest to the village of Pepperhanger'.
Berry starts walking towards the faint blue line of wooded hills
in the distance.
'Here and there she passed through hamlets; often without seeing a soul, for
the men were at work in the fields, the children in school, and the women drowsed
away the long, hot hours of the afternoon behind drawn blinds.'
'The country she was passing through was changing. Trees and copses took the
place of hedgerows; houses and villages were fewer, and meadows and cornfields
were interspersed with stretches of dark heath.
'She dined at noon on the cool, juicy, but unsatisfying flesh of a raw turnip
from a field, with blackberries from the hedge for desert; then, after a rest
in the shade, set out again towards the hills which had now turned from a faint
blue to a sunny, distant land of wood and heath, white cottages and green fields.
'While the sun was still high in the heavens she entered the Forest
'
Then she stumbles across the very church that Skipper had mentioned. 'She advanced
up the aisle; treading upon and passing over her own name without seeing it:
B E R E N G A R I A
Onlye daughter of Edmund Verlander brt.
'But the living Berengaria had no thought for what was underfoot
and half obscured by time, for, to her right hand slumbered the crusader in
stone. and, straight in front, on the chancel wall, were the carved and gilded
monuments of which Skipper had spoken. Verlander after Verlander - Sir Edmund
- Sir Thomas - Sir Harry - then Sir Edmund again, with their ladies and children's
names - another Berengaria among the latter - "dyed of ye decline at ye
age of XVI" - and still another on the queer green brass let into the wall,
the first of all the Berengaria Verlanders, had she known it - the one named
after that Queen of England who sponsored her in the Syrian desert where she
was born.'
However, the sexton turns up and moves her on.
She arrives at a main road 'hot with tar and noisy with motor traffic' where
a sign-post says Avonmouth, 17 miles, and begins to walk along it.
A sailor overtakes her, and offers to show her a short cut through the fields.
Foolishly, she takes him at his word.
He begins to molest her, but she is saved in the nick of time. 'His beastly
hands were all about her, when a bicycle bell tinkled and a big schoolboy with
books strapped onto his handle-bar came wobbling towards them. Without waiting
to hear the sailor's explanations, or how he would account for her screams,
she dashed out of his hold and past the delivering angel like a hare let loose.'
Berry finds a secluded place to sleep among some trees on a hill.
During the night she hears a commotion and a splashing sound from away down
in the valley.
In the morning she sees smoke rising nearby, and finds a camp fire in front
of a caravan. Over the fire stands a woman, feeding it with sticks, 'not a gypsy,
but a respectable-looking woman in a white apron'. Lettering on the side of
the caravan says: G & D Young, Avonmouth and in smaller letters beneath
All Cane Goods Made By Deborah Young Who Is Totally Blind.
The blind woman, Mrs Young, asks Berry if she has seen her husband, who had
been gone all night. Then a policeman turns up to say that a man has drowned
while trying to cross the river - it is her husband.
Berry helps to console Mrs Young, who decides to 'adopt' her as a niece, telling
her: "You've got nowhere to go, you say; and I've got somewhere to go,
but nobody to look after me. You stick by me and I'll stick by you, as we ought
to do."
Mrs Young has two rooms in her sister's boarding house in Avonmouth,
'where we've always put up in the winter'. She offers to pay Berry to look after
her there "for I should have to pay somebody in any case, now me poor husband's
gone; me being blind and me sister busy with her lodgers and her boys and what
not."
Her sister's nineteen year-old son Stan arrives to help them drive the horse
and caravan back to Avonmouth. He is a motor mechanic by trade.
'Upon a September morning of dazzling brightness the little procession
crept into Avonmouth,' and Berry sees the sea for the first time.
Berry meets Mrs Young's sister, Mrs Liggins, and settles in. She soon realises
what a busy life Mrs Liggins leads running her boarding house.
Mrs Liggins is also looking after Peter and Wendy, five year-old twins of Mrs
Woodward, alias actress Miss Mona Fitzmaurice, who was once a boarder at the
house but is now touring for a living.
Berry writes a reassuring letter to her mother, and we are told that correspondence
is restored between them.
Berry helps in the care of the twins, sometimes joining in their
games "like a thing on wires," as the Punch and Judy man on the beach
said.
She also discovers a shop with a box of battered, smelly old books labelled
pick where you like 2d, and 'in this way she extended her circle of friends
and soon knew Maggie Tulliver, Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, Lorna Doone, Meg
and Jo and Beth and Amy and many more, far better than she knew any living boy
or girl of her own age.'
One Saturday night Stan takes her to the Pictures. 'From the end of their row
came the soft, but distinct sound of a kiss, and the next moment Stan's hand
crept over Berry's as it lay on her knee.' After that, though Stan invited her
to go again whenever he had the money, she always had some excuse ready.
The other residents make the assumption that Stan and Berry are 'courting',
but Berry becomes more interested in Mr Francis, the lodger on the top floor.
'"But what kind of work does he do in his bedroom?" asked Berry.
'"Doing? Why, don't you know? That's his typewriter. He does poetry and
little bits for the papers. Queer way of earning a living, isn't it? His name's
Heath Francis. Queer sort of name for a man, Heath!"'
Berry finds a book of Heath Francis' poetry in the house, and is puzzled by
it. 'She had read poetry before and liked it, but this was different. Instead
of being easier than prose it was harder. There were long words, difficult words,
which she had never heard or seen before; and these words, instead of flowing
freely, seemed to her to be caught up and set in a pattern. She had to think
and think again before she could capture the meaning, and then think and think
again before she could make it read anything like poetry.'
One morning, Mrs Liggins slips and hurts her ankle. Berry takes on her duties for a while, and in this way meets Heath Francis, who otherwise keeps himself to himself.
Mrs Liggins says of him: "It's a bit queer, being a catholic
and staying indoors so much. Not that being a Catholic's got anything to do
with the staying in
"
Heath Francis starts to consult Berry on her knowledge of country lore when
she goes up with his tray. 'He soon became interested in the child and liked
to draw out her quaint views upon life.'
Berry decides to try and get to know more about poetry from him. '"White
hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine," she quoted shyly, with the intention
of asking what eglantine was, but he took up the words and finished the verse.
'"But, Berry," he said wonderingly, "that's Keats, you know.
Do you know all the poets, you marvellous child?"'
He begins to find that gradually, 'as they came to know each other and Berry
advanced in her studies, she had her own opinions and was inclined to be obstinate
in defending them.'
'For the first time in her life she knew what it was to feel happy. She ran
hither and thither all day, spending herself in service, yet seemed never to
tire. Her step became lighter, her colouring more vivid, her dark eyes glowed,
she had smiles and kind words for all - including Stan.'
One day on the beach, Heath Francis turns up to help the twins
and Berry build their sand castle.
Berry's new happiness 'brought the old legend of Eden back to her mind, and
once, in a leisure moment, she took down the book in which she had first read
it. "Gates of Eden! Gates of Eden!" she whispered: but this time she
saw no exotic garden with rich fruit and glowing flowers: the imaginary scene
had changed to a plain upper room, lined with books and clouded with tobacco
smoke, with sea-gulls screaming across the window and a tall man writing at
a desk.'
Stan has been out in the country with the lorry and brings back
some cowslips for Berry. She makes them into cowslip balls for the twins. Heath
Francis sees them playing, and joins in, to Stan's displeasure.
The next day Heath's priest Father Delamere comes to tea and says to him privately:
"This Berengaria of yours needs help, deserves it and has a right to it;
but are you the right helper?"
Berry receives a letter from her mother saying that she and cousin Oliver are
to be married, as otherwise they will be 'living under a cloud'. Berry thinks
that, had it been herself, she would rather have been cut into little pieces
than marry against her will.
Miss Mona Fitzmaurice's Touring Company visits the town, and she is reunited
briefly with her twins. Then 'the next day she left with her Company for another
town and only the presents were left to assure them that her visit had been
a real one; but the first note of change had been struck; the present delightful
order of things was not to last, and Berry knew it.'
One summer afternoon when Berry is playing with the twins on
the beach, she unexpectedly meets Miriam and her aunt Mrs Leopold. We also discover
that Heath Francis is an old friend of Mrs Leopold. Berry takes tea at the Hotel
Marina with Miriam and her aunt.
Berry ends the day on the pier with Heath Francis. 'Past and future shrank to
nothingness: her heaven was here and now. She shivered with pure happiness.'
At the door on their return, they meet Stan. He had been working late and was
tired, cross, and very grimy.
'The week Miriam and her aunt stayed on in Avonmouth was the
happiest Berry had ever known.'
For the last day of Miriam's visit a picnic is arranged. Heath and Miriam, Berry
and the twins, take the tram to Moorfields. Berry gets distracted with the twins,
and on returning to the picnic site discovers that 'Heath and Miriam had drawn
closer to each other; and, as she gazed, Heath drew nearer still to light Miriam's
cigarette. What were those two talking about?'
'Not only the shadow of the next day's parting lay between Berry and Miriam,
but another, new shadow had crept in, the first vague, chilly breath of distrust
between friends.'
'Miriam's departure was followed by other changes: nothing in
Avonmouth ever seemed quite the same again.'
'With the autumn came the departure of the twins,' then Mrs Young died.
'Mrs Liggins proved a true friend. Berry was urged to stay on and help in the
house as a daughter, and when she protested, was told it was her right.' Mrs
Young had left the few pounds she possessed to Stan, but had thought Berry should
share with him.
Then Heath tells Berry, "I shall soon be leaving you."
'"Leaving me? Leaving here - this house?" she faltered.
'"This house and this town. I am going away."'
Berry tells him of her suspicions about him and Miriam, who has been writing
to him. 'Heath recoiled to his full height. "Marry Miriam!" he exclaimed,
"what are you talking about, Berry? Miriam has no such thought I am sure;
nor have I, and for a very good reason. I couldn't marry Miriam if I wanted
to and she were willing, nor anybody else, because I am married already."'
Heath tells Berry the story behind his unsuccessful marriage
to an actress. She wanted a divorce years ago, but his Catholic faith prevented
him from agreeing to it. "She is still my wife, though I have had no communication
with her for ten years."
'"My own little Berry," he whispered, "I shall think of you always."
He imprinted one long, tender kiss upon her brow and they parted; Berry to make
an elaborate pretence of washing her hands at the scullery sink; he to go up
and pace his room and invent a thousand ways of keeping their friendship unbroken,
keenly conscious all the time that it was friendship no longer.'
'One morning, midway in polishing the stairs, Berry stopped to
rest at the landing window. A warm hand was laid on her shoulder. Heath had
come upstairs unheard.
'"Come with me, Berry," he said.
'The warm blood surged to her cheek, her hands, her feet.
'"Come with you? Where? When?"
'"To London. To Cornwall - anywhere, everywhere I go, for always."
'"But your religion?"
'"My religion?" He stiffened, then laughed. "Oh, well, of course
the Church does not approve of such unions. Most wise of her, too, in the majority
of cases. But you and I are different, dear
"
'"I am happy, of course - I could never be without you, but
"
'"Ah! You confess that! You could not be happy without me? Say that again,
please darling."
'She said it again in a number of ways; to his entire satisfaction and her own.
'For the next few days she lived in a kind of mental maze, in which every path
led back to the one central point of loving and being loved.'
'The transformation in her puzzled Stan. A week ago he had found her crying
downstairs that night; now she went about as though she had not a trouble in
the world.'
Heath and Berry find the opportunity to go out alone. 'Presently, Heath brought
some rather squashed-looking paper bags from his coat pockets. "I have
brought us a picnic, he said, "pity it's too damp to sit down."
'Berry laughed. "If you'd been brought up in the country you'd know it
is never too damp to sit down in a pine wood
"
'There they reclined and ate the cakes and fruit he had brought, kissing each
other between bites, because, as they said, they had no other wine to drink.
Then Berry smoked a cigarette, an art she had recently learned from Miriam,
and one of which she was more than a little proud.'
Playfully, Berry searches Heath's pockets. 'From the last pocket she brought
a little ivory crucifix on a narrow red ribbon. He sat up and took it from her
rather hastily. "I had forgotten I had that with me," he said.
'"Heath," she said shyly, "I should like to know more about your
Church, as you call it. If I am to live with you always, you know, your faith
must be my faith."
'"Not necessarily."
'"Oh, yes; I think so; I do indeed Heath. I could not bear to be shut out
of anything. And I want to know on my own account, too, because
"
'"No, no! Not now. Another time perhaps; when I understand my own position
better. We shall have all the rest or our lives in which to discuss such matters,"
and, taking her in his arms, he stopped her lips with kisses.'
'The precious days passed, each one of them counted out by Berry,
as a miser counts out the coin for some inevitable purchase. Only a fortnight
now until the day on which Heath was to leave Avonmouth. She would only be left
alone a short time, it was true, but it would be their first parting, and before
they could meet again she would have to face difficulties and the pain of deceiving
those who had been kind to her.'
'For the first time in her life she used face-creams, hair tonics, nail polishes
- anything she saw advertised in the newspaper and could afford.'
'
always came the little pricking question, finer than a needle's point,
but, oh! so insistent. Is it right? Will it be good for him?'
'Gates of Eden! Gates of Eden! She was in sight of them at last. Would she ever
enter there? Ought she?'
'Heath was going to teach her to ride a bicycle. She had never been on one,
and the prospect gave her as much pleasure as the promise of a racing car would
to most girls of her age.'
'"Are you sure we are doing right, Heath?" she asked tremulously.
'"Right Sweetheart? Of course! What have I told you a thousand times? God
meant us for each other from the first."
'"Then why did He let you marry that other?"
'His answer was a kiss, as it had been to so many of her questions lately. Not
until he released her did he see how little it satisfied her.'
But when Father Delamere calls at the house the next day, Berry discovers that
Heath has given instructions to Mrs Liggins to say he is not in.
'She knew now that in going away with Heath she would be doing wrong.'
Stan has gone out to rescue a lorry that is stuck by in a narrow
country lane.
Unknown to him, Heath and Berry have been having a 'last' meeting in the shelter
of a roadside thicket, and have started walking towards the town along the same
lane.
'All was over between them. Berry had made that plain; and their stolen meeting
had been prolonged by Heath's arguments and pleading.'
Then Stan's lorry comes round the bend.
'Heath had barely time to seize Berry and fling her forward against the bank,
making a barrier of his own body between her and the side of the van. As his
own face plunged into the thorns above her head, he felt a swift, sudden pain
zig-zag from chin to forehead, and sank heavily against her, but dimly aware
that the vehicle had stopped and voices were hailing them.'
Heath is badly injured around the face and is taken to a doctor who is a friend.
'Berry followed the little procession into the surgery and lingered near the
door. Then, 'before Berry could collect her wits, or Heath in his weakness stop
her, she was out in the street and the door locked behind her.'
Stan is at home full of remorse, but tells her that he will be out of her way
soon as he is off to America with the offer of a job in the motor trade there.
Berry does not see Heath Francis again, and Stan leaves for America.
Berry is left with the prospect of following Mrs Liggins when she moves, or
making her own way in life.
'Three times a week all through that winter, Berry attended a shorthand and
typewriting class at the Technical School. She made some progress; but less
than might have been expected.'
At last she realises that her choice lies between going into domestic service,
or 'a life of semi-dependence upon Mrs Liggins and Stan. The last was not to
be thought of; the first distasteful in the extreme: week after week she hesitated.'
One morning, a thick envelope arrives addressed to Berry.
'There was quite a bunch of folded papers inside, and, nestling right in the
middle, a cheque. "Pay Miss Berengaria Verlander the sum of Ten Pounds".
It was made out in firm, clear handwriting, but signed beneath in queer old-fashioned
characters, all up and down like the edge of a saw - 'Edward Morgan'. Morgan?
That was Skipper's name, and here was a little note in pencil signed 'Skipper'.'
The letter tells her that he has at last inherited a house and some money from
'our poor Tom, my brother that I told you about'. He wants her to 'come and
live in it with me and be a daughter, or perhaps better say grand-daughter,
and be happy and comfortable together.'
Berry arrives at the house. 'She lighted the candles she had brought, cooked an egg and sat down to her first meal in her new home.'
* * * * * * * *
'One afternoon a month later, Berry climbed the little dark heather-clad
hill which stood like an island above the green sea of tree-tops at the back
of the cottage. She had left Skipper in his fine new dressing-gown dozing over
his newspaper and wireless catalogues before the fire. The old man was fast
gaining strength and looking forward to a summer - many summers he hoped - of
good health and moderate activity. Just now he was absorbed in the idea or getting
a wireless set installed and his search through the different catalogues kept
him busy and happy for hours.
'Yet this was her daily haunt, the spot she loved best where all was new and
entrancing; for something in the wild remoteness of the place, its strong bracing
air and freedom from human contacts, appealed to the wild solitary strain in
her own nature. She had already been there a score of times and never met a
human creature; the villagers did not care to labour up the hill when there
were the woods in which to go 'primrosen', or the nearest town with its shops
and pictures.
'To-day, she reached the summit and threw herself down on the warm carpet of
pine-needles. Down below was the forest with its villages and church-towers
and winking blue eyes of little ponds set in dark, shaggy heaths.
'But she had not come there today to admire the view, though the sight of that
wide expanse with the silver gleam of the sea in the distance always thrilled
her. She drew a picture-postcard from her breast. A view of an old street in
Assisi and a greeting from Heath upon it. "Till we meet again."
'Would they ever meet again?
'Perhaps, some day, but never as lovers. Unless his wife died? But why should
she? She was young - younger than he was - inconvenient young wives only died
in novels. And even if it were likely, she could not build her hopes upon another's
death. That would be like murder - hateful! No, she would not write to him,
though he had given her his full address, hoping, perhaps, she would. No! that
was all over - a dream, a wild dream, a kind of a madness.
'She had suffered much; she would suffer again, being mortal; but never more
would she suffer alone, 'as one without hope.' She sprang to her feet and stood
erect, her arms outstretched, a minute figure upon the pinnacle of the hilltop.
The Eden Gates of her dreams were closed to her, but there were other Edens.
Life was before her - Life!'
Total novel about 88,000 words long